Lhota Turns Up Heat on Quinn for Supporting Police Monitor

Video

Joseph J. Lhota, a Republican candidate for mayor, criticized his Democratic rival, Christine C. Quinn, for endorsing a new office that would independently monitor New York City's police department.CreditCreditHiroko Masuike/The New York Times

For a political acolyte of Rudolph W. Giuliani, a ferocious rhetorical bomb-thrower, Joseph J. Lhota has proved an oddly mild candidate so far, repeatedly holding his fire — and his tongue — since declaring his Republican campaign for mayor of New York three months ago.

But on Monday, Mr. Lhota conspicuously changed gears, commandeering the steps of City Hall to deliver a blistering attack on his leading Democratic rival, Christine C. Quinn, for endorsing a new agency that would independently monitor the city’s Police Department.

Mr. Lhota denounced Ms. Quinn’s plan as “reckless and dangerous,” declared that it would “handcuff” the department, and demanded that she immediately withdraw her support for it.

And in a personal twist, he accused Ms. Quinn, the City Council speaker, of abdicating her responsibility to have the Council monitor the police force and instead seeking to offload the task to a new and unnecessary bureaucracy.

In doing so, Mr. Lhota offered a glimpse of the kind of candidacy that friends and aides have long promised: punchy, pointed and deeply committed to a vision of a muscular chief executive at City Hall.

As his Democratic rivals worry about the possible excesses of the Police Department, and talk about listening to the voice of the people, Mr. Lhota has made clear that he does not welcome intrusions onto the mayor’s turf.

“I don’t believe for one second that the police commissioner needs a second oversight,” said Mr. Lhota, a former deputy mayor in the Giuliani administration. “That is the mayor’s job. The mayor should question the police commissioner on what he or she does.”

A spokesman for Ms. Quinn, Jamie McShane, fired back on Monday afternoon, saying that “Joe Lhota simply does not know what he is talking about.”

“The bill that the speaker supports will do nothing, not one thing, to limit the Police Department’s ability to do their job,” he said, describing the inspector general’s role as making recommendations, not policy.

He rejected claims that the Council had failed to aggressively scrutinize the police under Ms. Quinn’s watch. Mr. McShane said the Council had played a role in giving new prosecutorial powers to an agency that investigates claims of police abuse, and in changing how the department trains officers to stop and frisk those suspected of a crime.

Mr. Lhota did not specify how the inspector general would endanger New Yorkers, beyond potentially “interfering” with the role of the police commissioner.

Still, with his rebuke of Ms. Quinn, Mr. Lhota is aligning himself with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has angrily dismissed the measure as “disastrous for public safety” and a threat to the mayor’s authority.

The debate over the wisdom of an inspector general — who under the proposed legislation would have broad power to review the Police Department’s practices and issue subpoenas — is quite likely to become a major issue in the mayor’s race, crystallizing differences between the Republicans and Democrats over police tactics and effectiveness.

Several of the Democratic candidates for mayor, along with civil rights leaders and City Council members, have called for independent oversight of the Police Department amid growing complaints that it unfairly targets black and Hispanic men for street stops.

A few days ago, three men who served as City Hall’s top lawyers in the Democratic administrations of Edward I. Koch and David N. Dinkins endorsed the inspector general proposal, writing in a letter that “residents in many communities need reassurance that they are being treated fairly and respectfully by the police.”

Mr. Lhota objected to that argument on Monday, saying that the department is already monitored by the mayor, five district attorneys, an internal affairs department, the city’s Department of Investigation, a state attorney general and federal prosecutors.

“The New York City Police Department,” he said, “has more oversight than any police department in the United States of America.”

He took pains to praise the department and, when pressed on the fairness of its stop and frisk practice, said that intensified training, not an inspector general, would weed out problems.

Mr. Lhota, whose campaign routinely highlights his connection to Mr. Giuliani’s rigid law-and-order policies, said that his real worry was the city’s crime rate, which, after two decades of sharp declines, has begun to nudge upward.

Shortly after Mr. Lhota’s news conference ended, Ms. Quinn’s Council staff sought to use Mr. Lhota’s relationship with Mr. Giuliani against him. Her aide distributed a memo to reporters recalling how Mr. Giuliani had embraced the concept of an independent monitor for the police when he ran for mayor in the 1990s. But the memo did not mention that, once Mr. Giuliani became mayor, he forcefully fought a plan by the Council to create such a monitor, even suing to block it.

On a day of subtle political mischievousness, Mr. Lhota seemed eager to exploit the rift between Ms. Quinn and Mr. Bloomberg over the inspector general issue, which aides to the mayor have done little to play down.

Mr. Lhota singled out Mr. Bloomberg for praise and, when asked to evaluate the mayor’s approach to stop and frisk, Mr. Lhota replied: “I don’t see any deficiency at all — whatsoever.”

Around that time, Howard Wolfson, an influential deputy mayor to Mr. Bloomberg, strolled by Mr. Lhota’s news conference. Breaking with a long tradition of mayoral aides blithely brushing past such political events, Mr. Wolfson paused behind a bank of television cameras and decided to listen in.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 17 of the New York edition with the headline: Lhota Turns Up Heat on Quinn For Supporting Police Monitor. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe